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The Sneaky Chef
How to Outsmart Your Picky Eater
By Missy Chase Lapine
One day, my youngest daughter had strep throat, and in the time-honored tradition of mothers everywhere, I hid her foul-tasting medicine in some chocolate pudding.
As I watched her swallow it without protest, I couldn't help thinking about all the wars I had fought to get my kids to eat a fabulous grilled salmon or delicious carrot soup for dinner. Like other American children, mine had learned to run in horror from whole grains, fruits, vegetables, fish and legumes. It dawned on me that if I wanted them to grow up healthy and fit, I would have to take this "hiding" idea a step further. If it worked for healthy medicine, I reasoned, why couldn't it work for healthy food?
And as I looked at the bigger picture, I knew there had to be a way to rescue dinner hour from being a battlefield, but without giving up on getting my kids to eat nutritiously. As a mother, this was a battle I couldn't afford to lose.
Thus was born The Sneaky Chef. I compiled a list of kids' favorite foods, the ones they would eat without resistance. I then came up with List B – "superfoods," the world's healthiest ingredients. And finally, how could I hide the items on List B inside List A? How could I conceal the foods they should eat inside the foods they would eat? After trying out hundreds of ideas in my own test kitchen, I came up with the secret: As long as they couldn't see, smell or taste anything too different, they would eat what was placed in front of them without a fight.
Through careful testing, I eventually perfected the art of 13 hiding methods such as pureeing, using foods that hide well and using visual and taste "decoys" to give food irresistible kid appeal. In the "make-aheads"– the recipe within a recipe that I worked into almost every dish – I made sure I used superfoods, which are ingredients that pack the most nutritious punch. Among them are spinach, which contains iron, calcium, folic acid and vitamins A and C; blueberries, which contain antioxidants, potassium, iron, calcium and magnesium; cauliflower, which is packed with vitamin C, folate and fiber, and which fights disease and enhances immunity; and sweet potatoes, which stabilize blood sugar levels and contain vitamin B and folates. The basic principle was that if I wanted to eat smart, I had to buy smart, so I kept as many of the superfoods in my kitchen as possible all the time.